Drawing With Crayon
by mystiri1
Summary: Bright colours on white paper seem more real than the world around her.


Namine wondered what it was about Nobodies and places with bare white walls. Both the Castle That Never Was and Castle Oblivion were vast bastions of stark white walls and subtle grey shadows, with the only decoration to be found in the architecture itself. Graceful arches and sharp angles changed the quality of light as she walked by, as though day and night were minor details with little relevance to anyone here. It was certainly true that both worlds paid little attention to the passage of time.

If asked, Vexen could probably give her an answer. But it would relate somehow to their existence - or non-existence - and the explanation would only serve to emphasise the emptiness of what they were. If it weren't for the fact that Nobodies didn't have hearts to feel emotions with, something the elders were always quick to remind them of, it would probably leave her feeling depressed.

It was also hard to stop Vexen explaining once he started. He wasn't as bad as Xemnas, who could give grandiose speeches at the drop of a hat, but he lectured as though he was teaching somewhat dimwitted students: blunt and impatient with lots of words that made little sense to anyone without his level of education, stopping only when he was certain that he was either understood or surrounded by idiots.

Marluxia was quick to mock him for it, and often sneered that the elders were too caught up in their old habits even for Nobodies. But Namine noticed that he always listened in case Vexen said something useful. Information, he'd told her once, was a weapon if you knew how to use it correctly. Namine often listened, too, because sometimes it gave her ideas. Ideas were far more useful to her than weapons, anyway. Or maybe ideas were weapons, too.

She knew why they appealed to her: they made her think of blank sheets of paper, just waiting for someone – like her – to come along and add some colour. But other times they repulsed her. There was just too much nothingness: a pale girl in a white dress, sitting in a pale white room, one fading into the other until it might as well not even exist.

* * *

><p>It was the spark of a memory (<em>Hers, not hers<em>) that made her get out her paints one day, and decorate the (rough stone) white walls with (_crude portraits_) multi-coloured handprints. The paint was cool against her skin as she slathered it on, the walls cooler still as she pressed hands against them (_a room with many children, laughing and shrieking and squishing paint between fingers before smearing it on paper. A paint-covered hand pressing against her front. A moment's shock _– my dress! - _then quick retaliation, paint flung about with childish giggles and gleeful abandon until larger hands intervened_) leaving behind a colourful testament of her presence.

The next day, the handprints were gone.

* * *

><p>The Organisation made sure that she had anything she wanted to draw with. Namine had brightly-coloured markers and pencils, paints and pens and inks from many worlds, but it was the crayons she liked best. They were wax, and would soften in her hands as she used them, the scent growing stronger (<em>candlelight flickering in a darkened room, with wooden shutters rattling violently in their frames as she huddles down. Drops of rain strike the roof with such force it seems as if the must be made of stone. A hand reaching down to pat her on the shoulder. "Don't worry, it's just another storm. We're perfectly safe in here, and by tomorrow, it will all have blown over and you can go to the beach to play with -"<em>) as they warmed. The lines the crayons drew were ragged (_real_), with more texture than pencils. She could use the barest touch of colour on white, or layer it until many colours blurred together. And when she ran her fingers over the result, she could feel the shape of the picture. Sometimes her fingers left smudges.

The Nobodies from the Organisation sneered at the crayon pictures. Drawing might be how her abilities worked, and Namine was certain that the crayons worked best for her, but they didn't see anything else special in colourful lines. She wondered if it was just her imagination.

* * *

><p>Namine didn't think too much about her own ability, or what she did with it. She liked to draw. It didn't matter to her if she was drawing what the Organisation told her to, or something else. She liked drawing people's memories, because she never got to see anything other than plain white walls and other people had whole worlds inside their heads, strange and bright and new to her. If she drew them slightly different, changed them just a little, they remained unaware of it. It was necessary.<p>

Namine was not blind. The Organisation kept her because she was useful, and as long as she was useful she didn't have to worry about having a (relatively) safe place to stay or buying new crayons. Nobodies didn't feel sentiment. If she wasn't useful, the Organisation would get rid of her, probably in an equally useful way. She had no desire to become one of Vexen's specimens.

Besides, mostly she just made a little change here and there. Even those times when she took some memories away completely, it didn't seem that big a deal. Those people still had plenty of memories of their own left. Most of Namine's memories – those that weren't white and colourless - belonged to somebody else.

* * *

><p>Sometimes, when it was quiet, she'd take the time to draw something for herself. Something from Her memories. Namine would draw (<em>building sandcastles on the beach<em>) colourful scenes with (_a treehouse_) meticulous care, and change them, just a little. Not much. But she'd draw it so that it was Namine who was sitting on the beach, watching boys tossing a ball in the surf, or holding an ice-cream cone that melted in long dribbles over her fingers. She'd draw it as though it were her own memory, and not something that was just... left behind.

Fingertips brushing over slick wax, she could close her eyes and see it.

(_Brilliant blue sky, so bright that she almost had to squint, and if she stared at it long enough she couldn't tell if those black dots were gulls or just her eyes playing tricks on her. The sand, almost too hot beneath her, so that she could feel it even through the towel she sat on. And two figures standing in the shallow waves, ball floating abandoned in the water as they splashed each other instead, laughing and yelling until one turns with a smile she can see even at that distance. "Come on!" he calls. "If you help me, we can get Ri-_)

She stops before she thinks of their names, of who those boys are. They might be almost her memories, but to say those names even in her thoughts feels like... trespassing, or something. Taking something that's not hers. Which is silly, because they were hers once. But she thinks it might also to do with the stack of sketchbooks she has, filled with the memories of one boy, memories that he no longer holds for himself. There's another book with memories that belong to someone who could pass for the second boy, who looks just the same; someone whose memories were born from those drawings. He could be hers, would be hers, if she allowed it, but there's some small part of her that wishes those memories would remain on paper.

She drew them. She knows better than anyone that they're not real.

When she draws memories for herself, there's another girl there, a red-headed girl who is always right beside her. Namine wishes sometimes that she could use her abilities on herself, make herself remember things as if they were true, but she can't. And so she never quite forgets that the memories belong to Her.

Namine's Somebody.

Sometimes she resents her for being so brightly-coloured and vivid and real, not just a pale shadow. Once, she draws those memories with pencil, and reaches for the eraser. It would be so easy to rub her out, pretend she didn't exist. It would be pointless, of course, because she can't work her magic on herself: but maybe, just once it would work. And that scares her more than anything else.

If her Somebody could cease to exist so easily, than a Nobody like her doesn't stand a chance.

* * *

><p>Sometimes, when she's drawing for herself, new pictures form. Somewhere far away, her Somebody is making new memories, and Namine can almost touch them for herself. But those pictures always remain incomplete.<p>

Like her.

They were once the same person, but they're separate now. She knows that her Somebody is out there, can even feel Her at times, but it's quite likely that She doesn't even realise Namine exists.

Namine wonders what it means, that she wouldn't exist without her Somebody, but her Somebody can live quite happily without her. Namine is keenly aware of her own incomplete state, but She doesn't even notice that a part of Herself is gone.

The other Nobodies want their hearts back, but Namine's heart is already taken and she's not sure that she can take it back. It currently lives inside a red-headed girl, who stands on a beach and wonders what it is that she's forgotten. Her heart still remembers the two boys that She used to play with, even if Her mind has forgotten.

Perhaps it's not surprising. Maybe Namine's magic is reluctant to work on her Somebody, or maybe it's because her Somebody is a Princess of Heart. It makes sense that Her heart would be stronger than others, and the strongest memories of all are those kept in the heart.

Namine looks at a drawing of two girls sitting together on a beach, her fingers still clutching a crayon. She thinks about the future, about memories that won't stay lost forever. She wonders if a single heart could be strong enough for two, or if time will prove capable of doing what she cannot, and erase some of the lines on the paper.

Picking up another page – blank, white, vaguely threatening – she begins to draw.


End file.
